noblechairs HERO Series Office and Gaming Chair Review

noblechairs impressed us with its ICON series office chair, and now it is back with its HERO series chair. The HERO is built with the same attention to detail that the ICON is, but it is built for larger guys and has an upgraded list of features, along with a bigger price tag. We used the HERO for a month and here are our thoughts on it.

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noblechairs HERO Build

As usual, we have supplied you with another suspenseful (not really), and exciting beyond belief (not really) chair build video. We show you the entire HERO build process that took about 30 minutes, but don't worry we speed everything up for you. We have changed the way we do these now, as we have used the chair for a week already and we give you some initial thoughts about the chair in question.

noblechairs HERO Features

The HERO is what we would consider having a striking and substantial look to it. Placing it next to some other chairs we have here, it comes in very close to looking like the AKRacing Onyx Office Chair that we are reviewing now. That said, it still very much has its own appearance in a sea of gaming chairs that we see marketed today. It very much looks like an adult would own it, should you wish to give that impression.

The rear of the chair is unremarkable, which is a good thing considering the customer that noblechairs is likely marketing this to.

The seating surface is one again done with excellent stitching. It simply looks expensive, and if you have seen a quick and cheap stitching job before, this will stand out to you. If not, you will look at the stitching on the HERO and simply think, this is the way it should be done. Worthy of mention is that the stitching on the ICON still looks brand new a year later and the stitching on the HERO is identical.

The upholstery on the headrest is laid out well and has an embossed noblechairs logo. The seat back has a small noblechairs badged logo on it as well. Both are well done and not "in your face."

As you can see in the second picture below, our HERO came out of the box with a rather nasty scrape on it. Had we paid $440 for this chair, we would have sent it back. From examining the scrape, it did not seem to happen while it was in the packaging, but rather happened before it was put into the box. Had it happened in the box, it would have been more of an abrasion, but this looks like one swipe across the chair that damaged it, so more than likely it happened at the factory.

The seating surface is nice and wide. It does have a bit of a contour to it for your thighs and buttocks as well. The depth of the seat is also very welcomed too. Sitting with our back to the chair, the seat fully supports our thighs. There is about a half inch from the front of the seat to our calves. This is all good in our book, but if you like to tuck your feet under the seat, it does not leave much room to do this.

If you like to lean your chair back, back, the angle on the HERO is near perfect. This angle of lean-back, coupled with the lean-back angle of the rocking mechanism, makes it near perfect for taking a nap in. When doing this, the HERO feels very stable too. We never got the feeling we were going to pitch over backwards. We show this in the video above as well.

This is our favorite feature of the HERO. This is a bit hard to show you in a picture, but you can see the way the adjustable lumbar support pushes out from the seatback. It is adjusted all the way out, and that is how we have been using it. I personally have herniated disks at L4 and L5, and I love the support the HERO gives me. The support has a nice shape to it as well. It has a nice even curve to it with good support all the way across the curve and does not feel like the support is just pushing out in just one spot of the chair.

The hardware on the chairs is very solid and stable and works well. The covers for the hardware is not anything special, and could be better done. The plastic covers do however rub on each other when moving the seat forward or back, and there is a tiny bit of squeak if you push back into seat back with a bit of force.

You can see the knob used for adjustable lumbar support above the seat back mount on the right side of the chair below. If you lean forward a good bit, you can adjust this while you are sitting in the chair.

The arms are well done on the HERO. These move in eight different directions and are easy to operate once you figure out the locking systems. The locking systems also very much lock into place once you get these where you want them. You can grab the chair arm and move the chair around by those and the arms stay in place. While the pads on the arms are firm, we never had issue with elbow comfort.

The base is the normal 5-star design that we are used to seeing on almost all chairs. The casters are small. about ~60mm in diameter. The casters are the low point on the HERO's overall build quality. These casters do roll well, but not amazingly. This chair gets moved around a lot in this office, however if you are not wheeling back and forth between workstations, this is likely not a concern. The casters are quiet enough, certainly not noisy, but not easiest on the ears either. Our main gripe with the casters is that we feel like we can feel and hear flat spots as the caster compresses under our weight while moving around. It gives you the feeling that you are rolling over tiny ripples in the floor...when there are not any tiny ripples in the floor.

The caster base is built solid and has tremendous rigidity. It is an all aluminum casting and we like that very much. In fact the entire seat base and tilt mechanism of the chair is built like the base. Everything is very solid after fastening all the parts and pieces together. You have controls for moving the class 4 gas piston up and down, as well as locking or unlocking the tilting mechanism. You can also adjust the tension in the spring on the rocker from mild to very stiff.

The way the seat mounts to the piston is the normal compression fitting that simply slips over the piston. The HERO has a little more side to side wobble than expected, but this is not something that will likely notice when simply shifting your weight side to side. You have to try to wobble the chair to identify it, but it there.